


we turn our selfishness into a weapon

by eldritchbee



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: (Cheadle's The Rich), Body Horror, Gen, Implied Relationships, Leorio says Eat The Rich, Medical Jargon, Medical Trauma, Mentor/Protégé, also I made up a history for Cheadle, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 04:29:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19221601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritchbee/pseuds/eldritchbee
Summary: She adjusts her hair and her glasses like she’s still a picture of perfection, but there’s sweat underneath blood and a sharp look in her eye that matches her voice when she directs the others in their finished care. And then she leaves to shower. And then she’s the stoic Chairman once more.He wishes she'd kept the blood on her.***Where Leorio wants Cheadle to teach him more than anything, even if he hates her a little. Takes place before and during the Black Whale arc.





	we turn our selfishness into a weapon

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men:
> 
> "Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!
> 
> I have a duty!"

 

***

"Why did you decide to become a hunter?"

"It seemed like the best way to leave."

"Why did you become a doctor?"

"It seemed like the best thing to do with my skills."

No matter how much he presses, he doesn't get anything more than that. "I did it for money," he tells her, and she nods. "I hate rich people, but I did it for money." She nods. He finds she's quieter when Pariston and Gon's sorry excuse for a father are gone. He remembers her when she shoved the spotlights on him during the election, shoved the position of _Boar_ on him and his university, cutting through what was _supposed_ to happen to him so that she could get what she _wanted_ to happen with him. He’s not the chairman, but she sat him in the Association and gave them his face back. He tells Kurapika, _that’s pretty sneaky, huh?_

She's quieter now, less reactive and more reserved, and the wall she's thrown up between herself and everyone itches and itches at him. “She doesn’t like people knowing she’s capable of cutting under them or shoving her hands through loopholes to get what she wants. That star in law, though, it’s not for nothing,” Mizaistom tells him, “I’ve known her for a long time.”

 

***

She’s created so many techniques, _advanced_ them, and there are papers upon papers with people adding on, to create a world less corrupted by money. A world less likely to let its own people starve. _A world without corruption_ , the start of it, because there would be no need to fight to live.

She was right about his education. Hands on work was incredible, and as it had been before he would have had to wait another year or two for proper clinical experience. And he doesn’t think he would have ever gotten experience like _this_. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, researchers, all top of their field. Hunters with two to three stars under their belt and either experience, talent, or loads and loads of hard work to show for shining results. He’s always been the latter, but there’s no shame in that here like there always seems to be in the Hunting world.

Everyone taught everyone else. Incredible physical techniques, incredible _Nen_ techniques, incredible ideas, books to read, research to look into.

He devours it all, forces his way between people just to see something, comes out with blood on his coat and his glasses askew and his own _Nen_ pulsing through his body beaming as he attacks Kurapika with a hug. “You’ll never guess what they let me help with!”

He laughs (it’s good, it’s so rare, for Kurapika to laugh as well

it reminds him of _her_ in a way).

“You should find someone specific to teach you.”

He knows who he _wants_ , but she’s someone else too often.

 _She_ stays back, away from him, for the longest time. She directs in the hospital setting with Sanbica the same as in meetings as Chairman, sits a wall between her and everyone else. With other responsibilities she can’t stay long in the hospital setting, too many calls, too much politics to do with Beyond Netero, with Kakin, with the V6, with the Dark Continent. She’s too quiet, her dress too perfectly white, everything so put together, and it itches and itches because he’s starting to doubt everything about her he’s seen before.

Maybe he _doesn’t_ want her.

Until something happens. An unperfect event when a man comes in with his stomach open and a limb severed from his body. It’s all ugly, ragged, like done with a blunt knife or the teeth of some beast, and only his own _Nen_ is holding him together. Later, he’ll remember how quickly she reacted to Pariston during the elections, the way he’d say something and she stood immediately, a plan already in mind. It’ll remind him of this, how her white dress soaks a terrifying crimson and her aura seems to snap just as quick as her mouth back then as she holds pressure and the man’s stomach closes slow and careful. He doesn’t even see how she does it, just sees the vision of her laying over him, blood everywhere, screaming and screaming and suddenly everything breathes right again.

She adjusts her hair and her glasses like she’s still a picture of perfection, but there’s sweat underneath blood and a sharp look in her eye that matches her voice when she directs the others in their finished care. And then she leaves to shower. And then she’s the stoic Chairman once more.

He wishes she'd kept the blood on her.

 

***

Before she'd decided to become a hunter, she'd always been stuck inside. She never says why, but he decides she must have been either a sickly or smothered sort of child. He can't imagine her as someone who would stay inside purposely, someone too afraid to step outside or get their hands dirty, not with the way she sorts through herbs or stains her white dresses red with blood so easily. Before she'd decided to become a hunter she came from a rich family, and he tells her he could have guessed that too based on the clothes she wore and the cadence of her voice. Whether she was sickly or smothered, he always imagines a younger _her_ in the corner of a vast library, white dress untouched by dirt or blood and a mountain of books surrounding her. She laughs when he tells her this, but never confirms nor denies.

 

***

Early on, after a meeting with the Zodiacs, he stays behind with her. It’s quiet, for a while.

"I think I hate you," he tells her, and she looks up. She nods, but says nothing. Her face is blank. He presses more. "I hate that I starved while you were full, I hate the chances you had that I didn't." She nods, her face is blank. "I hate that you got to learn to read so early, you stayed at home and read and read while _I_ never had the chance.” She nods, and he wants to reach out and shake her. “Or, I guess, at least, I hate that you could never understand. I hate you in theory.”

“Okay,” she tells him mildly. “That’s alright. Leorio. We can’t all get alon -” and he cuts her off by slamming his hands on the table, standing.

“You don’t get it!”

She sighs, fixes her hair and glasses. “What don’t I get? Leorio.”

“I hear all the time about all the cool shit you did! I’ve _read_ your papers in school, and when I _got_ here I thought fuck! one of the best doctors in the world! straight-up head doctor's very own master! _she’s_ going to be teaching someone like _me_. And it’s like, you’re not even the same _person_ you were before. You, you want to _expel all corruption_ from the Association, from the _world_ , and what are you doing about it now?”

There’s a grimace on her face. “The Association didn’t choose _me_.”

“And? You know why? You’re not even, like, a _person_ right now! You’re… you’re a fucking _duty_ ! You got all these fucking _chances_ and shit you can _share_ and _say_ and what? You keep everything to yourself, like, what the _fuck_!”

She taps a pen against the table, humming. “Why did you become a hunter again, Leorio? You’re not receiving compensation, you can’t say it’s for the money anymore.”

“Holy shit are you -” he throws his hands up. “So I could give people their lives back! Free of charge! So no one has to fight to live ever again!”

Tap tap. “And you’re here. Leorio.”

“And so are you! You wanted to leave, you wanted to use your skills, you’re here! But you’re _not_ . You tried to shove it off on me, and now you’re _ignoring_ me and shoving _me_ off on _your_ helpers. That's all people do to me. That’s all people like _you_ do, shove it off, oh that’s not my problem! it’s not my problem! it’s _yours_ because you didn’t scrounge up the cash to save your friend, it’s _yours_ because it was between eating and someone you love when people like _you_ can have both!” there's tears in his eyes.

The tapping gets louder, edging on furious. “Leorio why are you _here_?”

“Because I wanted _you_ to teach me!”

She drops the pen, her gloved hand squeezing into a fist. She lets in a sharp breath, like she’s about to speak, and then

she nods.

 

 

***

After the next council meeting, when he tries to follow Kurapika out, she calls him to stay behind. She sets three thick volumes in front of him that night and says he has the week to read them, to understand them, and to present to her something that could be relevant to today's practice - to his _own_ practice. “Shit, with meetings and getting everything settled in the Whale's infirmary… you know I thought working here was what my grade was gonna be based on."

“You wanted my own teaching on top of that. We’re learning from the past and the present, to create the future we’re trying to reach. We must work on all three at once. And never forget to use where we came from to push us towards where we’re going. Leorio.”

“Yeah. Yeah _I_ know that.”

“I know you do. Further, you’re missing at least a year and a half of regular textbook work to dive straight into clinical work. Leorio. The least I could do would be to offer a supplement to what you’ll miss. It’ll help you, since I do see it’s difficult to ask proper questions and get a proper, logical answer in the middle of an emergency. Or even basic work. So, you can do your physical training in the infirmary, and I’ll supply after-hours lessons and answers for things that need more than a few moments of surface level facts.”

He groans, flipping open the cover of one of the books. “You’ll kill _me_ first.”

She smiles, and it looks more real than the tight lipped ones she saves for political conference. It reminds him more of when she's with Mizaistom, of Geru and Cluck when they looked over samples and expressed the future that could be created with them. People she was closest to, who she shared the most with. There's a bursting sense of pride that he had elicited it now as well.

"It's like the Hunter examination. I said we would grade you at a high standard, if you _die_ you simply weren't prepared. Leorio."

"Never said I wouldn't do it."

"Apologies. Leorio. I assumed your complaints were a form of resistance."

"Did you - was that you teasing me?"

She's still smiling at him, he grins back. "Whatever, you'll get the best damn theses from your best damn council member and best damn intern."

"I know it. Leorio."

 

***

“If anyone can do it, you can,” Kurapika says, resting his head against Leorio’s shoulder. There are dark circles under his eyes, but his features soften whenever Leorio talks. He opens himself to Leorio muttering to himself while scribbling in one of the dog-eared medical books that Cheadle had bestowed upon him week-to-week. “You’ll be an incredible doctor, you know,” Kurapika tells him because he’s a comfortable space to be in, he makes Kurapika feel at ease despite all his racing thoughts about his family’s eyes possibly being right under his nose.

Where Kurapika has to trek through the mud between good and evil, it always feels good to fall back to Leorio’s side, where those things don’t matter.

 _First, do no harm_. It wouldn’t matter how far into evil Kurapika fell.

Gon and Killua had their own pasts, he knew they wouldn’t care. But Leorio’s dedication to _benevolence_ was a different kind of comforting than that of people who simply didn’t even consider the weight of what he was doing. Gon would die for him no matter what he did, and Killua had little to say in the matter of murder and dealings with criminals. But Leorio would slap him and shake him and yell until he remembered his human side, and Leorio would change him back to who he wanted to be, and Leorio would still love him in the end. And Leorio would still let him lean against his side while he spoke so excitedly about saving lives instead of them _ending_ . Instead of them _wishing_ to end. Instead of _being okay_ with them ending.

"So, well, in theory it's like. Alright, so, you know how people are starting to work with blood filtering on a completely _massive_ scale now, right?"

God fucking bless Kurapika, gazing up at him with all the interest in the world while all he did was babble on. "Hm? Wait what exactly do you mean by that?" (He'd stopped, frowned, confused. Kurapika always seemed to know a lot, after all, and the idea that he might not be aware of _dialysis_ was a little hard to believe.)

"Come on, you know, when people's kidneys stop working they can't get rid of what they need to. Fluid, lytes, all of that."

"Yes."

"Blood filtering. That's how it's treated."

Kurapika hummed again, "don't you just get rid of one kidney? Or have a transplant? With _Nen_ you could find a way to open it again but -" he's cut off by Leorio snickering. "What? I don't know these things."

Leorio cracks a laugh. "Sorry, it's just, you know _everything_ . And you know not everyone can just _get a transplant_ or _open their kidneys._ Right? That's 'renal system 101', it's not like the black market where you knock someone out," he makes a swinging motion with his arms, "and steal a kidney. And using _Nen_ only lasts so long too, especially if it's not the user's and - oh shit I'm sorry about the stealing-a-body-part thing."

Kurapika blink, shaking his head. "I _don't_ know everything. And _you're_ the one studying it. Tell me more."

Leorio shrugs, "okay, so it's like, you gotta connect the circulatory system to a machine and it becomes this closed system. The blood goes into the machine, gets cleaned, some of it gets taken out, and then the clean blood goes back into the body, and the person can function all normal until they build it all back up again. It's been like that for years, seriously Kurapika it's a _super_ common procedure, _way_ less expensive than getting any _Nen_ -"

"I grew up in an isolated mountain," Kurapika deadpans. "And when I came down I started working with Hunters and - as you say - people who'd just _knock someone out_ when they need a better kidney."

"Shut up. Okay, so what I brought up to Cheadle -"

"Cheadle, not _Chairman_ , _Yorkshire-sensei_?"

"Don't be jealous. Look, she’s pretty much the only person who gets in deep with me about this stuff. She lets me try to problem solve, instead of in the infirmary where its all _that’s cool but save it for a classroom we have lives to save_ . Which, fair, I technically skipped a whole year and a half maybe and a good amount of theoretical shit, I didn’t even get _eased into_ a clinical setting just -”

“I’m joking, Leorio.”

“ _Anyway_ ," Leorio waves his hand. " _Cheadle_ , I was asking her, people gotta get this done basically every two days, they're reliant on it. And, in fancier richer places you got _Nen_ instructors trying to teach them how to use their _Ten_ to open up and help their kidneys work again but even _that_ can take forever if someone actually has to work to get a strong grasp of it.”

“That makes sense. so you were thinking of a way to try and allow the poorer and those not as tuned to their auras to go _less_ days without this dialysis and thereby spend _less_ time and money with a machine.”

"Yeah! You got it! A middle man with _Nen_ doesn’t work, actually having someone manipulate your blood out of you and cleaning it and putting it back is _worse_ , because that opens you up to all sorts of infection. It’s harder to create a closed system between two people, you know, and you’d still have to do it every two days which _yeesh_. So we were talking about instead, maybe a way of keeping a smaller machine with you. Some sort of conjured thing, mass produced, with a manipulation setting. Sort of like a med-pump but more complex. You’d just have to throw out your waste, which you know is just as easy as shitting and flushing the toilet.”

Kurapika laughs, feeling himself drifting off with Leorio’s hand in his hair.

“What’s holding you back?”

Leorio grimaces, saying the word with all the cadence of how he usually does: “ _Money_ , to even try a prototype. And manpower. There’s a thousand other equally important things to do that she and I have talked about, and not enough funds or people to do them. The lot of us here, even the  _Chairman of the Hunter's Association herself_ , can't get everything.”

“If we get back from this alive, I think the V6 will do whatever we want.”

Kurapika opens his eyes to see Leorio’s face above him, grinning wild. “That’s what everyone’s hoping over there. That’s what we want. _Funding_ , _workers_ . Not all the people here got their _Nen_ awake, some are really shit at it and some just can’t work the whole thing out at all. Doesn’t mean you can’t help, just means they have to work _harder_ . And money’s all a big part of that, no money and no special powers? Nearly impossible to go where you need to go. You work hard enough, though, and you might get a _Yorkshire Scholarship_ , special or not.” He laughs, “You know what she told me? She told me she doesn’t even know half the people in that program, and only knows how much money’s going out because she keeps all her checkbooks perfect and balanced. Wish I had her problems sometimes. Wish I really _did_ hate her. I could, you know?”

“I know how you feel,” Kurapika sighs.

 

***

Even when he’s secured her as a mentor, that genuine smile doesn’t last long. Mizaistom tells Kurapika who relays to Leorio: _she’s just like that. I know who she is and she’s still like that with me. Don’t let him take it personal_ . It’s frustrating. "She's cool," he tells Kurapika, rushed as he scribbles notes in her books (which, he didn't know if he was _allowed_ to, but once he started he figured there was no point to just _stopping_ ). "But she’s so much cooler when she _isn’t_ pretending to be all Perfect-Madame-Chairman-Head-Doctor. I don’t care what she’s like to cow-head. I don’t care if she’s known him a million years! _I_ don’t want her to treat _me_ like that. Shit. Scratch what I said before, I _do_  hate her.”

“You’re so selfish sometimes,” Kurapika says with a mock sigh. Leorio turns on him sharp, and it’s almost like there’s smoke from his ears from the heat of his frustrations.

“Hey! Don’t think I’ve let _you_ off my shit-list either Mister-Never-Calls-Me-Back. _You_ don’t get to be all stoic on me either.”

“I know, I know. You’re quite delicate.”

“Shut _up._ ”

 

***

Late one night he asks again _why did you become a hunter?_ and she says _because Isaac Netero saved her_ . All she had ahead of her was a life in that library, reading but never seeing the world she read about beyond the walls. The spaces she would stare into would be impossibly limited, painfully so, and she probably would have died young of boredom. And then Isaac Netero came and _saved_ her.

"Don't you think you're being overdramatic?"

She smiles grimly, fingers brushing against her ears, "no. And when I became one, when I met the Chairman again, I was happy. I think I would have done anything to help him, I think I would have done anything he asked. I love the Association he loved. I would do anything to protect that as well." Her voice cracks. "I think I'm doing it wrong, though I don't know how to do it any differently. I'm not like _them_."

He ignores that, the crack in her voice. He knows who _they_ are and he won't give them the time of day. Instead, he grins, nudging her foot under the table. "You know that's a little weird, right?"

She shifts, pulling back again. He doesn't let her go far, instead reaches out to shake her shoulder. She jumps at his touch, he pulls back fast. "Yes. Leorio. It's weird. But I really felt I would have died without it."

He knows the answer before he asks, "care to e _val_ uate?"

She laughs, "no."

She learned about the human body first, from the largest organ to the smallest cell. It led to readings on aura, big thick volumes about how to focus it into _nen_. _Ten_ , _Hatsu_ , _Zetsu_ , _Ren_ , _Gyo_ and how they related to a physical anatomy. It turned and twisted and branched out into different types of bodies and how delicately interconnected we all were. Flora, fauna, human bodies, the dirt and worms and microbes deep inside, rocks and water and air. Living and dead and decay. She says the first time she went outside she had to _sneak_ out, looking for certain plants that grew nowhere near their area.

He imagines her, a smaller _her_ , in a white dress with gloves. How dirty they must have gotten as she dug into the earth with her gloved hands, or rolled around among tall grasses. She must have muddied her skirts in some pond her parents owned. They must have been _furious_ about it when they found her.

She laughs. "You have quite the vision of me. Leorio."

"Am I wrong?"

She doesn't answer.

"Why did you become a doctor? You didn't have friends, clearly." She laughs at him when he says that, he shrugs. "Don't think you knew many people, you see much death before Netero drew you out? Why a doctor?"

"I loved the human body. I loved it's harmony, and I was so curious about disharmony." There's a light in her eyes he doesn't think many see, it comes when she talks about her craft. One star for being a doctor of her skills, another for the science of herbs and medicine to hunt disease. "I was fascinated by how easily it was thrown out of harmony. Microbes on your skin, harmless, can become deadly once they get underneath."

"Strains of _Staphylococcus_."

"Emotions can degrade the body, destroy the spirit if they want. To even the most severe of degrees."

Leorio's hands clench in his lap. "Like Gon.”

Cheadle pauses, glances up at him. She looks unsure, tilting between continuing to allow something emotional to pass between them or backing up, closing off. But, she’d already started this, told _him_ about _her_ , and so she allows it to go forward. “Like Gon.”

“Hey so, I _saw_ him,” she winces, hearing him say that, “they called me to the hospital when he got there.” _God,_ _how cruel_. “No one knew what to do, even the _professionals_. Would you have -?"

She takes a sharp breath. What a thing to ask. "No. I took a look at him too, after you came in to yell at Ging. I wouldn't have been able to do anything, I would have said he was dead."

"If there was no miracle. If I did win, if I worked my _ass_ off and made everyone work with me, if you were my adviser and I was Chairman, do you think -"

"I would have done it for you. Leorio. I was already thinking about it when I saw him, how to save someone who's body had been that torn to shreds. I can show you my notes, don't, don't look at me like that, Leorio. It wasn't _really_ for you. It wasn't for Gon either. I told you how I felt about the association. I wanted to use you to beat Pariston so badly, so I needed to offer you something, so I needed to try. But the miracle _happened_. So it doesn't matter."

His hands slam on the table again, her eyes widening again. But his own shine with excitement. "So it's not _impossible_. Can you show me your notes? What books were you reading? What -"

"It was a thousand things. Leorio. He'd broken all his bones, destroyed all his muscles, every spiritual port closed and collapsed under failed organs and a loss of faith in himself. Exorcists never worked because there was nothing _to_ exorcise. What kept his brain from becoming hypoxic, what kept his heart beating and lungs inflated, were those who had learned how to _manipulate_ blood and oxygen through a body that refused to do it _itself_. Even if he was able to breathe and move blood on his own, even if he was able to even slightly open his spiritual ports to gain some sort of consciousness, then there would still be his muscles and bones to think of. They atrophied at an impressive rate, and only that miracle made it so it didn't take _years_ to barely reach what he'd had before -"

"I actually was thinking about that!" he interrupts, and she falls back when she hears the shake in his voice. There's the smallest sympathy in her eye when she realizes he's been slowly looking more and more miserable the more she'd spoken. "You know how we've been using a mixture of enhancement and emission to keep patients' muscles strong while they're stuck in bed? And it's like, either we rotate out a couple of mediocre healers whose effects don't last as long or we have one-in-a-million _great_ healers who can do it for longer but on less people. Or, something to help the mediocre healers and the people who can't use _Nen_ work together to avoid atrophy without having to rely on like, fucking geniuses. So everyone who needs that kind of help can get it easy, with no pain to anyone else. Here, look at this -"

she steadies his notebook under his shaking hands and looks up at him.

"I still don't have many friends," she tells him. "I forget sometimes. Leorio. I ap -"

he shakes the notebook harder under her hand. He thinks if she says those words, _I apologize_ , he'll hate her all over again. For diving back into that proper shell of her's that avoids conflict, peaceful tones and trying to find a path of least resistance even if she hates it. And he'll hate her more because she'll make him feel like it's _his_ fault for having emotions. "Here, read this, please. Tell me what you think of it."

She pulls the notebook from under his fingers, loose and careful. She sets her red pen between the pages and closes it gently. "I've never had many friends. Tell me about Gon."

Leorio feels like his chest is rattling with each breath. "Well, you know his dad. So."

"Ging has nothing to do with this," she says sharply, quickly, and it's almost like the look in her eyes when she stared at Pariston Hill on stage. It takes a beat for her to soften. "Tell me about _Gon_. Leorio. I've heard a lot about Kurapika from you and Mizaistom. I hold him in high regard as well. I'd like you to tell me about Gon and the Zoldyck boy."

He starts at the beginning.

At the end, there's a white handkerchief in his hand that didn't start out his, but belongs to him now.

They take up conversation about muscle atrophy the next time they have alone.

 

***

The Black Whale has sailed, and somehow even despite the lack of Association meetings he feels even busier working with the science and medical team in their own infirmary. Kurapika isn’t around anymore ( _again_ , and when Leorio has free time it reminds him of the whole year before when none of his calls were returned

except, he realizes he himself probably wouldn’t have the time to be there either anymore).

When he can’t sleep (often), he drags Cheadle (who rarely sleeps anyway) to a table with his homework. “I know you don’t _sleep_ in your room. So socialize more,” he grumbles, setting coffee down in front of her.

It’s a joke, because everyone else who remains behind have their own noses in books and microscopes.

“It’s the loosest definition of socialization, if you could even call it that. Leorio.”

Still, she stays, and even takes down some of the books she chose to keep on the Whale. _He_ rattles off a list of uses for his own emission abilities to be used in the body. _Busting clots_ through quiet taps - he needs to know enhancement though, and to such a slight and precise degree that he would only harm that one single small point. _Creating a clot_ , made of aura, holding blood back from spilling out of the body or into the third spaces of it. Maybe even tumors, vegetation grown on heart valves, an ileus in the bowel after open heart, et cetera. “God, all this shit has to be so precise though, I can’t, you know, slam through it like I would. You do that, you bust open a whole person.”

A younger girl looks over their shoulders. Leorio jumps as Cheadle waves pleasantly. “Ms. Zika,” they both say at the same time, cadence different. Zika is looking between them, though her eye drifts towards Cheadle more often than not.

“I couldn’t help but listen in. My grandfather learned how to enhance skin and muscle in order to cut off blood flow from severed body parts, so I’ve looked a little into that. If you could do it on a smaller, more precise scale well, well -!”

“The easier it is to use on a common person. And the less likely you’ll damage other organs in the process,” Cheadle offers.

“That’s exactly why I was _thinking_ about it,” Leorio states, pointing at Zika excitedly.

“Can I sit down with you!? Doctor Yorkshire! And... that guy! That hunter guy! I only see you around sometimes, I’m a pharmacist, I’m not a hunter or anything so that’s all I really know. Doctor Yorkshire, is he your student?"

Cheadle opens her mouth, and he thinks she’ll say something cheesy because it starts with: “Well, actually we -” so he cuts her off instead, a grin on his face:

“Yes. _I’m_ her student.”

"Your ideas! Oh, I wanna hear about it! I can mostly transmute, and I _suck_ at enhancement, but I think it would be a super cool project!"

Zika's jumping up and down, _weirdly_ excited Leorio thinks, but then so are most Hunters. A lot of people into _medicine_ are, judging purely on how Cheadle talks and thinks and _is_ . He can see where a lot of them accidentally separate themselves from the patient, forget the person and only see the diagnosis underneath. Some of them do it on purpose, some of them barely realize. He _hates_ it, but he can’t exactly say he hates everyone who does it anymore. _Thanks, you know, for asking about him_ , he’d told Cheadle after talking to her about Gon. He still had her handkerchief in his pocket at all times. _She just forgot sometimes_ , she admitted that she needed reminding. He doesn’t think she’s the only one. He's willing to remind her, so long as she smiles at him, teases him, doesn't go cold.

 

***

“Why did you decide to be a hunter? Leorio.”

“Because it was the easiest way to get the cash to get to school.”

“That’s wrong and you know it.”

“Because it was vicious. It could have killed me. And that seemed like something I should go through, should see, before I holed myself away with books. Why did you decide to be a hunter?”

“Because it was vicious. It could have killed me. And after a life of being hold away with books, it seemed like something I should go through. Should see. Do you still hate me? Leorio.”

“A little. I don't think I'll ever stop hating people like you, at least a little. Why did you decide to be a doctor?”

“Because humans fascinated me.”

“More than that. It always has to be more than that in this sort of _business_. Or, maybe not. But for the good ones, it has to be more."

“Because I want to love people, and I want to be loved. Leorio. Because I want to meet them, and touch them, and change something within them like they would me. Because I want to protect them, and be seen protecting.”

“You’re a big dumb puppy.”

She kicks him under the table.

"You're a big _mean_ puppy."

She sighs.

 

  
“You brought something up about monitoring brain functions after trauma, Leorio. Let’s talk about _that_.”

**Author's Note:**

> a) I'm not well versed enough in fandom to know if:
> 
> 1a) the idea of Mizaistom and Cheadle being longtime friends/acquaintances/just generally are closer than the other Zodiacs is canon or fanon but I see it a lot when I've looked for anything Cheadle so  
> 2a) Cheadle coming from a rich family is canon or fanon either, but I like it so  
> sorry.
> 
> b) Medical jargon. Dialysis, etc, I'm a nurse so I wrote out some stuff about Nen and applied it to some of my textbook stuff. Ignore it if you're not into it, tldr; Leorio has someone to talk about medical junk with and I think too hard about it. 
> 
> 1b) the stuff about clot busting comes from chapter 347 and the post below  
> https://yuiikari.co.vu/post/137421690713/senpais-muffins-i-dont-think-we-talk-enough


End file.
